Sunday, March 25, 2012

RALLY – FRIDAY

There were nine seminars tents spread out over the infield along with hundreds of RV’s for sale and the Big Tent for the vendors. Other vendors were set up outside the big tent.

One of my biggest complaints about the Rally is the tram service. I haven’t heard exact figures as to how many people are here but it is somewhere between 6,000 and 7,000 (not including the day pass people). That is a whole lot of people to transport and I figured there would be some problems but it was worse than that.

The trams were given a set route they “had” to follow per the rules. That meant that those of us waiting near the end of the pick up route could not get on a tram because they were always full. There were times when we counted 12 to 14 trams pass us before we could finally get on. And it was a really long walk to some of the earlier tram stops. One of the things they should have done was to run every other tram the other direction on the route. But when people tried to talk to them about it, they were told the trams “had to follow the rules”. No flexibility allowed. They were totally disorganized with the tram service after the entertainment in the evenings. It was total chaos.

Another problem was the tunnel that we had to go through to get to the infield. This really became a bottle neck because of the number of trams, golf carts, motorhomes, trucks, cars, etc.

Bill Cosby was our entertainer on Friday night. What a funny man. He’s 74 years old and his delivery has slowed considerably, but very very funny and entertaining. I couldn’t get a picture of him because of the distance and the fence but they had him on the big screen which helped because his expressions are a lot of his delivery.

After the show we get home and sit outside to visit and pretend we have a campfire going (like in Q).

The wind picked up just a little so we decided we should put our awnings up. Jan’s didn’t want to cooperate and the guys had work to do. Success!

Another of the reasons we don't like big rallies, especially "THE RALLY!" The folks who run them -- that's the Affinity Group, or Good Sam, have absolutely no imagination and once a rule is set, that's it, kid. Too bad for you! Incidentally, the forerunner of THE RALLY was called The Great North American RV Rally, and we attended the very last of those. There were about 6000 plus RVs there. There had been bad rain just before the rally, ruining some designated parking areas, so hundreds of RVs were relegated to abandoned shopping center parking lots, a few as far away as 20 miles. Can you imagine the tram problems that time? We were fortunate to have a water and electric site close in -- a handicapped section! It was a good place to hide out for a few days!

We will be going to the one in Louisville in June. We will stay at Grandmas campground about 20 miles away. It is a little drive but we have full hookups and good electric. We have adog and our friends have cats so need good electric. We stayed there the last time it was in Louyville. We were at the one where it rained and we were parked at Papa John stadium parking lot. Road the bus over and then walked back at night. It was good.

Man, oh man...what a place to avoid...for us, anyway! Glad you enjoyed your time there. We don't usually do well with anything that has that many folks around, so we try to stay on the less beaten paths when we travel. Thanks for sharing...it's good to get a personal viewpoint from some experienced folks.

We went to the Rally on a day pass on Thursday and noticed the same thing on the trams on our way in. We must have timed it better on the way out because it was only a couple trams and then we were boarded. Thought the tent was about the same size as Q but more dedicated to RV stuff. Still want to do an Escapade sometime and a Carriage National Rally.